Bat in the Belfry
by Aspiring Mythmaker
Summary: One mistake. That's all that separates a good thief from a dead one. Life doesn't give second chances, does it?


Written for the Kelviniana forum Dark Waters of Halloween challenge.

* * *

Rouge looked down on the freighter floating five hundred feet below, a small island drifting across the sea. In a world with vessels the size of skyscrapers, it was a small operation, but still more than four hundred feet long. A tramp freighter, picking up the jobs that were too small or too specialized for the big ones to bother taking.

Like diamond smuggling, if her source was telling the truth.

The wind started to get choppy, and Rouge worked her wings harder to stay steady as she tracked the movement across the deck. Most were busy checking on the sparse containers stacked across the deck, but a few were loitering around. Fortunately, her white fur would make it easy to mistake her for a seagull, provided they didn't stare too long.

She was tempted to simply wait for nightfall, but it wouldn't come for another twenty minutes. She'd been in the air since the ship had left port, two hours earlier. She was starting to tire, and she needed to be alert going into this.

_And...go_. She folded her wings to her sides and dropped into a steep dive. Her ears clung to her skull as the wind screamed around her, and she watched the deck fly toward her. Three...two...one... Her wings flung out, the force of the deceleration nearly caused them to fold, but her muscles held them firm. She coasted the last ten feet to land on top of the ship's bridge, smiling. _And that's how it's done._

The air pressed against her, ruffling the edge of her wings, and she shook her head as she dropped carefully to lie on her belly. She pulled her GPS out of her vest pocket and double-checked her location, nodding. The ship was about sixteen miles out from shore, with about five more to go. It was time to get ready. She inched to the edge of the roof, then slipped over and through the half-open window she'd spotted earlier. It was a bit of a squeeze, but getting into tight places was her occupation, and she was inside within seconds.

_Now all I need to do is find an out-of-the-way place to stow away before we arrive, and...is that tobacco?_

Rouge heard metal scraping behind her, and she turned just in time to see the crowbar as it struck the side of her head.

* * *

Commander Abraham Tower glared at the report in his hand and dropped it on his desk. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Lieutenant. Is there anything else?"

"Not yet, sir." Lieutenant Askin glanced down at his notes. "They've got her locked up down in the hold, and it sounds as if they're still trying to decide on what to do with her."

"Great," Abraham said as he turned to look out the porthole. Outside, the waves were dark and choppy, tinged slightly red by the setting sun, and he could only just make out the nearest boat. _It was all going so perfectly_, he thought sourly. _I should have guessed that a wrench would be thrown in somewhere._

He sat down behind the desk, straightening his gray GUN uniform before waving for his subordinate to take a seat. Askin hesitated, then sat down in one of the chairs. Like all the furniture, it was bolted to the floor to keep it from sliding, and Abraham felt the man's discomfort as he fidgeted in his seat.

The boats, courtesy of the Coast Guard, were several miles out from the action, as they should be. They'd been a last-minute appropriation, but years of practice had taught Abraham that the closer to a problem you were, the easier it was to solve. Still, there had been objections to the GUN Commander leaving the base, given the recent unrest.

_Unrest_, he thought with a scowl. _Is that what we call an attack that nearly destroys an entire GUN division?_

The man calling himself Doctor Robotnik had certainly gotten their attention when he invaded Green Hill with an army of war machines. Even after beating back the attack, with the help of the blue hedgehog Sonic, GUN forces across the United Federation had been kept on high alert. There was uncertainty among the ranks, including the higher-ups, that the madman would attempt conquest again.

_Which is why I need to be here, doing my job. I won't let one crackpot paralyze our entire armed forces. And if that means I'm in a position to keep things going smoothly, even better._

_And a fine job I'm doing of that._

Abraham shook himself, then turned to the map on his desk. The coordinates for the rendezvous were marked in red, along with the position of his own forces surrounding it. The freighter would just barely skirt into international waters on its way to West Side Island, and the foreign diamond smugglers would run alongside to make the transaction. After which, they would go on their separate ways, with no one the wiser.

Or at least, that was the way it was supposed to go. As soon as they made the exchange, the two nuclear submarines following in their wake would surface to take them into custody. With the diamonds as proof, and the bugs they'd planted on the ship during its last "inspection" recording everything, there wouldn't be any question of guilt. Simple.

Until a mobian had swooped in and made things much more complicated.

"Permission to speak freely sir?"

Abraham looked up from the map, eyes narrowing as he looked at Askin. "Granted, Lieutenant."

Askin shifted in his seat and shrugged. "Sir, this doesn't have to affect our mission. If she trailed this ship out from shore, she probably realized what she was getting into. I hardly think she can be considered an innocent bystander in all of this."

"You think she's somehow involved in this?"

"I think she knew what she was doing," the lieutenant continued, "and it almost certainly wasn't legal. And the fact that they've locked her in the hold means they probably won't be making any fast decisions where she's concerned. If anything, they'll wait until their business is done before they do anything."

Abraham listened, nodding thoughtfully. "That does make sense, Lieutenant. And the truth is, from what we've gathered, I don't think any of them would have the guts to pull the trigger themselves...directly, that is."

"Sir?"

"The foreign smugglers. I'm familiar with their kind, and they don't play by the same rules. If they learn there might be a witness that needs taken care of, what do you think they'll do about it?"

Askin licked his lips. "That's...possible. I still don't think that it really affects our mission, sir. It's only one mobia-"

"I wouldn't finish that sentence if I were you, Lieutenant!" Abraham snapped, and Askin's mouth clicked shut. The commander gave him a flat look and shook his head. "That's not the kind of thinking I want to hear from soldiers under my command. Is that clear?"

"Crystal, sir."

"Good. Right now, I'm inclined to let things play out. But if push comes to shove, we might have a decision to make."

* * *

"Thank you, Officers. We'll take it from here."

The hands on her arms relinquished their hold, and she sniffed at them as they saluted and left. With a sigh, she turned and smiled. "Thanks, Dad. I-"

"Sit. Now."

Cringing, she moved over to the sofa and sat. Her wings trembled, and she forced them still. Her father was angry, that was easy enough to see. Her mother though...she refused to look at her, and that hurt far more.

"Do you remember what I told you the last time they dragged you home?"

"Look, will you just-"

"Do you?"

She balled her fists in her dress. "You told me I'd regret it."

"Yes, I did. Our name has a great deal of respect in the community, and our well-being relies a great deal on that respect. Having a thief for a daughter is not the kind of thing we want."

"It was only a ring! Seriously, would you-!"

"Silence!"

She sat back, feeling like she'd been hit between the eyes. He'd never spoken to her that way. Not since...never! Her mother continued to sit there like a damp rag, and she willed her to do something, anything to head him off, but she didn't.

"Your mother and I," he said, ignoring the way his wife's shoulders stiffened as he mentioned her, "have devised a suitable punishment for you." He pulled a folded page out of his jacket and handed it to her. "Read it."

Reluctantly, she unfolded the page and skimmed over it. She started to sweat as her eyes slid lower and lower, and she suddenly balled it up and threw it. "You wrote me out of your will?" she shrieked. "You can't do that to me!"

"We not only can, we have." The man's face reddened beneath his brown fur, and his hand tightened in his pocket. "We've also canceled your credit cards. You've become quite accustomed to using our money to buy your way out of trouble, so I thought we'd see how you fared without that security."

She stood up and stalked over to him. "I won't let you get away with this. I'll make you regret trying to-"

"Wake up, girl!" he thundered as his hand streaked towards her face.

* * *

Rouge gasped as a wave of cold water brought her back to consciousness. She coughed and gagged at the sensation in her head, but she shook it off and tried to get her bearings. Three humans stood in front of her, and her ears picked up a rustle of clothing from the one behind her. Her hands were chained to the back of the chair she found herself in, and her feet were likewise bound.

Not good.

"You're awake," one of them said as he tossed away the empty bucket. He was wearing some kind of uniform. _The captain?_ "Good. Now, do you want to tell us what you're doing here, girl?"

Her mind raced. "I got lost. I needed a place to land. Why'd you hit me?"

"That's what happens when you show up uninvited. As for being lost," he reached into his pocket and pulled out her GPS, "according to this, you've been following us ever since we left port." He bent over and picked up a crowbar. "Wanna try again, ratface?"

The sweat felt cold against her skin, and she licked her lips. _Okay, that didn't work. Maybe...honesty?_ "I-I heard there were going to be diamonds on this ship."

The men looked at each other for a moment, then back at her. "Who told you that?"

"A guy I know. A fence. He said he heard you were going to be bringing in a whole bunch of cut stone tonight."

"Uh-huh. And you thought you'd help yourself to a few of them, did you?"

She smiled weakly. "They're a girl's best friend, you know?"

They laughed at that, and the one with the crowbar tossed it aside. "You've got a lot of guts, batsy. Too bad we gotta clip your wings."

The words stopped her heart cold, and Rouge stared at them. "What?"

"We're doing work with some pretty hard people. They'll be getting here pretty soon, and when they do, they're not going to want any witnesses. So..."

"No, no!" She shook her head. "Please, I won't tell anyone. I promise!"

"Pardon me if we don't take the word of a thief. Sorry, girly, that's just the way it is."

She screamed, thrashing around in the chair, and the human sighed. "Will someone please gag her already? We need to get moving."

* * *

Rouge gnawed at the cloth in her mouth, her fangs slowly working their way through the material as tears streamed down her face. The chains bit painfully into her wrists, and her feet were starting to feel numb, but she strained against them still, trying to break free. Her wings were pinned behind her, and the chair would keep her from getting any leverage out of them anyway.

She moaned into the fabric as she worked furiously. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen...

* * *

"So, you're back."

Rouge flinched at the cold contempt in his voice, but she couldn't blame him. "Yes."

"You know, I'm ashamed to say we were actually worried for a while. No note, no address, no word at all before you left. We thought you'd left everything behind until your mother checked her jewelry cabinet."

She felt tears in her eyes, but refused to let them fall. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen...

"It took us a while to buy them back from the people you sold them to. Some of them were worth quite a bit more than what they paid you. Especially your mother's engagement ring." He looked her in the eye, and she had to turn away. "That was the final straw for her. She blames me for all this, of course. She's even threatened to file for divorce."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He leaned forward, cocking his ear towards her. "I didn't catch that."

She swallowed, then swallowed again. "I'm sorry."

"An apology doesn't suit you," he said after a moment. "You're not sorry for us. You're sorry for yourself. Sorry that after six months, you ran out of things to sell, and had to come groveling back here."

She wanted to say something, anything, to defend herself, but she didn't. Even if she could, if there was something she could say, she didn't want to. He was right, after all.

"If I thought you learned something from this whole ordeal, if I thought it had made you a better person...but you aren't, are you? You're the same stupid, selfish girl you've always been."

Silence. A terrible, aching silence.

"Get out," he said finally. "And don't come back."

* * *

_It's not supposed to be like this,_ she told herself. _I'm better than this. I _deserve _better than this! There were so many things...someone, help me!_

_Someone? Who?_

Her struggles ceased as the thought crossed her mind. _Someone would, wouldn't they? If they only knew...someone would come, right?_

Her friends...did she have friends? Colleagues, sometimes...thieves and killers. People she met, but never saw outside work.

Her lovers? Most hadn't lasted a week, once they realized the glitzy clothes and jewels she wore were all she had.

Her...family?

Her chin sank to her chest and she sobbed. _There was no one. No one at all._

When the sun rose tomorrow, and she wasn't there...no one would notice.

The door to the hold swung open, and a trio of men stepped through.

"It's time."

* * *

As they hefted the chair above-deck, she caught sight of the foreign smugglers and swallowed. Most of them could have been mistaken for the freighter crew, albeit thinner, and dirtier. But the man in front...

His eyes bored into hers, but there was no recognition that he was looking at another living being. No trepidation, no uncertainty, no emotion of any kind. It was like she was already dead to him.

"Is that it?" he asked, fingering the saw-toothed machete at his waist.

"Yeah," the freighter's captain said, shifting awkwardly. "We were thinking you could...?"

The smuggler nodded. "Indeed. However, we will expect a bonus with the next payment to cover this." He reached for the machete, but the captain shook his head.

"I'd prefer not to clean up the mess," he protested. "Do it some other way."

The hand hovered on the handle of the machete before the smuggler shrugged and let it go. "Fine. Then we can do business?"

The captain nodded, and the smuggler made his way over to her. She should have done something, offered a final, desperate act of defiance...but she merely sat there, watching him. It just didn't matter. His hands closed around her neck, and she closed her eyes-

"Captain!"

The sudden cry went up, and she opened her eyes as the hands left her neck. She watched as the crew flooded towards the rail with cries of consternation.

"Oh, shit, it's a submarine!"

"Where the hell did it come from?"

"We're dead in the water!"

Abruptly, a voice boomed through the night air, carried by a loudspeaker.

"Attention! By order of GUN, you are hereby ordered to heave to and prepare to be boarded!"

* * *

Rouge closed the window behind her and sighed, before sliding down to sit against the wall. Her hands and feet were still tender from being restrained, and that had made getting in a lot tougher than she'd originally suspected.

_I must be out of my mind,_ she told herself.

It was a thought that had come to her more than once over the last two days. She'd spent a lot of that time thinking, working things out in her head. It had been so easy before, doing what she did. Almost like a game. Even when it was dangerous, the danger had only made it that much more exciting. But now...

She pushed herself up and made her way over to the desk. Her fingers itched as she caught sight of a framed pistol's gem-encrusted grip, but she forced herself to ignore it. She did linger over the silver-framed photograph, of a man with a laughing girl on his knee. The same man she'd met that night.

* * *

"Commander, you can't seriously be considering just letting her go!"

"And what would you have me do, Askin? Book her for violating customs?"

Rouge watched the two humans argue with vague interest. After the smugglers had been sequestered, they'd come to interview her, but they'd quickly turned to arguing with each other. She considered simply leaving, but she wasn't sure that she was strong enough to fly.

_And besides, where do I go? Do I simply go home and pretend nothing happened?_

Raised voices intruded on her thoughts again as the lieutenant, Askin, spoke. "We don't even know if 'Rouge' is her real name. She's a thief. She admitted, on tape, that she was here to steal from them!"

"Here to steal diamonds which don't officially exist?" the commander asked incredulously. "You want to make that case in court?"

"Five more minutes and those nonexistent diamonds would have been here, and this whole thing would be open shut. Now we have to settle for conspiracy charges for the freighter crew, and the other ship gets off without so much as a warning! This entire mess is her fault!"

"This entire mess is our fault, Lieutenant," the commander objected. "We should have used evidence to try rolling one of the crewmen, or put one of our own on the inside, but we were too damn clever. We bet it all on a clean sweep, and it didn't work, and if anyone is going to take responsibility, it should be me!"

"It would have worked if you hadn't called the subs in early on account of this mobian tra-!"

The commander stepped forward, and Askin seemed to shrink as his superior glared at him. "That is enough, Lieutenant. If you have any further objections, I expect you to take them up in your report. In the meantime, I'll remind you to watch your language, or you'll be up on charges of insubordination. Is that clear?"

The lieutenant lowered his gaze. "Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

The younger human walked off unsteadily, and Rouge turned to the commander as she realized the full meaning of the man's words. "You're Abraham Tower. The Central City GUN Commander."

"I am, yes."

"You intervened...to save me?"

"I did," the commander replied.

"But...why?"

He looked down at her, then shrugged. "Because they would have killed you if I hadn't."

Her brow furrowed. "I don't understand. You don't know me. Why would you jeopardize everything for me?"

"It was the right thing to do, Miss Rouge. That's all."

* * *

_That's all. He made it sound so simple. But it isn't...is it? _She'd asked herself that question a lot since, and she didn't have any answers yet. What she had decided, though, was that it was a question worth asking. This seemed as good a place as any to start.

She pulled the letter she'd written out of her vest and lay it on the desk. Either he'd accept her offer...or he wouldn't. GUN might not want the services of a thief, but maybe she could do something else to pay him back. Something people would care about. It felt like the right thing to do.

And for once, the idea of doing the right thing wasn't quite so naïve.

* * *

AN: This was a difficult story for me. For one, I didn't have nearly the time I wanted to write and edit it. And for another, I didn't want to write it at all. I was intending to allude to this in a future story, as well as to foreshadow it in another, but I didn't think the material was strong enough to support a story on its own. Still, I decided it would probably fit the criteria for the challenge, so I made a few adjustments and wrote it anyway.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed reading this.


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